Men to Boys: Masculinities in Postwar Hollywood Film

Harvard FAS

Men to Boys surveys changing images of masculinity in Hollywood films from 1950 to the present. We use the films themselves to chart the enormous changes in how post-World War II culture conceptualized “manhood” and “masculinity.” For instance, the later 1940s and 1950s introduced a softer, wounded American man in films such as The Men and Fear Strikes Out. These changed in the 1960s with the introduction of a “hip,” rebellious male image in popular counterculture films such as Easy Rider and…